"In a move that has raised eyebrows, Microsoft has submitted a patch to the WebKit project to extend the open source rendering engine with a prototype implementation of the Pointer Events specification that the company is also working on together with Google, Mozilla, and Opera. WebKit is the rendering engine used in Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome browsers, making Microsoft's work a contribution to products that are in direct competition to its own."

Well, they need it an open standard to aid with adoption, and it also helps if they are the first out the door with an open standard like this.

Releasing the API in an unencumbered form is cool, but by patching WebKit themselves, they're making sure that the only reason for not supporting it is that it came from Microsoft - which is what Apple is doing.